Egypt Witnessing Massive Spam Decline Following Internet Blockage

According to Sophos the security vendor, spam volumes in Egypt have dropped massively following authorities' imposition of a complete blockage of the Internet across the country, starting January 27, 2011.

States SophosLabs that the volume of e-mail junk originating from Egypt during January 28-30, 2011 plummeted 85%.

Specifically, on January 24, 2011, Egypt dispatched 738 spam mails that fell to just 6 on January 28, 2011. On January 31, 2011, merely 2 outbound junk e-mails were recorded, according to Chet Wisniewsky, Senior Security Advisor at Sophos. Securitynewsdaily.com published this on January 31, 2011.

Remarking about the recent development in Egypt, Graham Cluley stated that although the cause of the spam drop i.e. blockage of the Internet wasn't advisable as an option for arresting the spam menace, it nevertheless appeared as substantiating the news about the rate of obtainable (or non-obtainable) Internet access to the population of Egypt. Nakedsecurity.sophos.com published this on January 30, 2011.

Moreover, one ISP -Noor Group, to tell the least number, is functioning, seemingly since it's servicing the financial market of Egypt, while the majority of other ISPs have been turned off, immensely restricting people from going online. Furthermore, government officials have as well managed in limiting, alternatively disconnecting social-networking websites from the Net.

Cluley added that whilst there might be fewer chances of getting a message on the Internet declaring that an end-user was the winner of the Cairo lottery, that wouldn't in any way make considerable influence on the total junk e-mails, which entered his inbox.

Nevertheless, the level of spam drop in Egypt may hardly influence the worldwide spam volumes that during the recent few months have fell quite fast, different security companies have commented.

For example: the MessageLabs Intelligence Report by Symantec for January 2011 disclosed that, since March 2009, there'd been a decline in spam levels at an unprecedented low rate of 3.1% between December 2010 and January 2011 that currently accounted for 78.6% of the total e-mail.